


Loft on Lake

by tiamatv



Series: South Side Swing [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (If You've Gotten This Far You Know They're Switches), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Play, Barebacking, Bottom Castiel/Top Dean Winchester, Chicago (City), Chicago Mafia, M/M, Meet the Family, Misunderstandings, Moving In Together, Openly Bisexual Dean Winchester, Pillow Talk, Rimming, Russian Mafia, Top/Bottom Versatile Castiel/Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 09:06:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25967092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: It’s been pretty busy on the South Side. Sammy’s got a new girlfriend, Ketch got his trap manually shut for him, and Alastair’s dead in an alleyway, good fucking riddance. Dean doesn’t know why Cas held on so hard to that expensive little shithole apartment in the South Loop, but at least that Bratva’s finally out of the goddamned downtown and staying where he should be: with Dean.Dean’s still going to break the legs of the next asshole who asks when they’re getting married.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Series: South Side Swing [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734220
Comments: 70
Kudos: 238





	Loft on Lake

**Author's Note:**

> If you are a new bean: while you could probably read this in isolation, I suspect you may find it more enjoyable if you read the other four first!
> 
> I had no plans of continuing this series. In fact, I had marked it as 'complete!' And then, true to what I always say about wonderful commenters throwing plotbunnies at me and fueling my drive to write, a few of you mentioned "Hey, what was that about a DOWRY?!" and a few others asked, "What about Ketch? He needs a beat-down!"
> 
> Muse, being the contrary beast that it is, took off in the _completely opposite_ direction. Oh dear.
> 
> Nonetheless, I have missed the Mafia boys, and I hope that you enjoy this return to this 'verse as much as I enjoyed writing it! 
> 
> Laura/[wearetheluckyones](http://www.archiveofourown.com/users/wearetheluckyones_Laura/pseuds/wearetheluckyones_Laura) has lovingly betaed every story in this series, and I am so, so grateful!
> 
> TW: references to minor side characters dying in unpleasant ways. No-one's all that sorry about it.

When Cas moved to Chicago, Bobby himself introduced the guy around to everyone that mattered. He didn’t have Sam do it—which would’ve sent a message. He sure as hell didn’t have Dean do it—yeah, that would’ve sent another message. He did it _himself,_ Sam at one shoulder, Dean at the other. He didn’t call him ‘Parakh,’ he didn’t say ‘Brotherhood,’ but he _did_ say ‘Angel Novak,’ and everyone stood a little straighter when Cas met their eyes with his expression cold and remote.

The scared ones, Dean noticed, let their thumbs fall to brush their guns. The smart ones kept their hands away and in plain sight.

(There really weren’t as many smart ones as Dean might’ve hoped. But, all things considered, anyone _smart_ would probably argue that Dean shouldn’t have been fucking around with the Novak’s second-in-command _anyway._ So maybe he was glad for the general lack of brains right about now.)

“Oh, an’ if there is gonna be _one_ goddamned comment about Russian mail order brides, I wanna hear it now,” Dean’s Capo announced, grinning sourly through his beard. “So, y’know, we can all see what this here Angel does to whatever idjit’s stupid enough to say it.”

Dean choked.

Yeah, okay. That was true Singer style, right there: pulling out a shotgun and just _shooting_ the giant fucking elephant in the room.

Cas smiled with just the faintest flash of teeth. “A pleasure to meet you all,” he said, politely.

Alright, then. That was pretty much that.

Or so Dean thought.

*_*_*_*

Dean had his palm resting lightly on the butt of his Colt as Cas walked calmly across the neutral zone, stepped primly around a gravestone, and handed Ketch’s newest stooge—Roy? Ray? Whatever—a piece of paper.

They were meeting in a graveyard? Seriously? What the fuck was with the clichés? Were the North Side Gang _trying_ to get them all arrested? It’d probably been Kubrick, Ketch’s new second after that thing with Alastair had gone down… guy had a really weird religion and death thing going on.

Dean would never admit it, but meeting at the goddamned fucking Bean had been better than this. Maybe they _should_ have called Charlie to set this shit up: she’d probably have arranged for a picnic or something.

“You can have it reviewed,” Cas told Ray-Roy. “But everything is in order.” He reached over, and the North Sider stood _very_ still as Cas tapped the edge of the paper lightly with a gloved finger. “There is a summary statement on the second page, if your financial person requires it.”

Sam snorted softly beside him, and Dean kind of chuckled—he was pretty sure no-one standing on the other side of the green of the Old Saint Patrick’s churchyard realized that that was an insult.

But he was pretty sure _everyone_ realized it was an insult when Cas didn’t wait to be acknowledged, and he sure as hell didn’t wait to be dismissed. He just plain turned his back to walk back towards where Dean and the rest of the Outfit contingent were standing, his ugly brown trench coat flipping neatly around his knees. He smoothed the twist of his blue silk tie with one hand as he walked, then pulled off the black silk gloves he was wearing.

By closing his _teeth_ over a fingertip and drawing them off, one at a time.

Behind the solid wall of Dean and Sam, Dean heard Max Banes—the new kid, who Dean was pretty sure had considered himself at least sort of heterosexual until this moment—suck in a long, slow, shaky breath.

Yeah, Dean knew the feeling. Dean was definitely _not_ heterosexual and Castiel really needed to stop giving him a hard-on in public…

“ _Fuck._ You think Winchester shares?” Max asked his twin in a low whisper.

Alicia snorted. “You wanna ask him? I haven’t learned how to raise people from the dead.”

Huh. Dean almost bit his tongue. Okay, maybe Banes was _also_ definitely not heterosexual.

Ray-Roy wasn’t very bright—the North Siders behind him were muttering like ghosts in the graveyard, but the poor bastard himself had actually let his mouth fall open at Cas’s great big titanium ones. But he didn’t turn his back to scurry back to his people until the rest of the Outfit had already turned to leave (‘cause it wasn’t like any of them could do _different_ now that Cas had waved a giant ‘fuck you’ flag in the North Side Gang’s face) because it turned out that at least one member of the North Side wasn’t a _complete_ idiot.

“That was really disrespectful, you know,” Sam murmured at Cas, his lips barely moving, once they were out of earshot.

“Yes, I’m aware,” Cas answered, calmly, folding up his gloves to put them neatly into his coat pocket. “But I’m faster than any of them. And I’m wearing a vest.”

Goddammit. Dean was going to kill him.

*_*_*_*

They got the news three days later, straight from one of their plants at baggage handling at O’Hare: Ketch had been seen boarding a plane for London. Probably no-one had told the North Gang, though, ‘cause _no-one_ in their right fucking mind was gonna follow Kubrick.

Huh.

“I guess the accent actually _wasn’t_ fake,” Rufus drawled, swirling his moonshine.

“Nice goin’, Novak,” Bobby said, grudgingly, raising a glass to Cas. More than a little grudgingly. Dean didn’t blame him, ‘cause seriously, what the hell? When Bobby’d told them that Ketch was gonna end up on a plane or in the lake, Dean had not thought that there was an _actual choice_ involved there. “Didn’t think that would work, but I guess this way’s less bloody.” He dipped his chin just a little, and that was more of a nod than _Dean_ had gotten the first time he’d come back from a rumble. “Guess the Novak was right to send you.”

Cas inclined his chin.

“Well, it’s still really fucking dull,” Dean muttered, stuffing his hands into his pocket and leaning a shoulder against the Roadhouse’s wall. Hey, he didn’t make any bones about the fact that he liked to fight and he would have _really_ liked to see his fist in the face of some more North Gang fuckers. He’d heard four of the five from their previous tango were back on the streets again.

Cas straightened up from where he’d been standing in parade rest, across the table from Bobby. His eyebrows were together and both corners of his mouth were arched deep down—he actually looked _offended._

“There’s nothing dull about taxes,” Castiel told them all, completely unironically.

It was a hard guess who made that choking noise—Bobby, Rufus, or Sam—but it wasn’t like Dean actually looked away from Cas’s face to check.

*_*_*_*

“So. Dean. When are you two gonna—”

Dean slid his creeper out from underneath Baby and was on his feet so fast, the little wheeled platform went sliding across the concrete and slammed into the riser blocks of the car up next to him. He stabbed a finger at Sam’s face and snarled, “You finish that sentence, Sammy, _one more fuckin’ word,_ and I’ll—”

But both of Sam’s eyes were wide, both of his hands were up with palms out, and he took a step back from Dean with this look on his face— _not_ like Sam was going to act like a giant farting asshole, but like Dean had pulled his Colt on him.

“Jesus, Dean,” he breathed. “If you didn’t want to come over for dinner, you just had to _say_.”

Dean paused. He came down off the balls of his feet.

“What?” he asked, with just a little bit less hostility.

“Dinner? You and Cas? You guys were coming over today?” His little brother was giving him a look like Dean had kicked him—which Dean guessed he kind of had, in a way. “Christ, Dean. What’s your _problem_?” Then, because Sam Winchester was a sensitive sonofabitch for all that he was about a mountain tall, Sam’s eyes went wide and soft and dark. “Is everything okay?”

Shit. Yeah, that was the question, wasn’t it.

“Fuckin’ peachy,” Dean grunted. The tension left his back as he walked over to the creeper, kicking it back into place. Then he kneeled down to start putting his tool box back together, rubbing his hands together in a way that just smeared oil over them both. He looked down at the mess of streaks on his forearms and sighed. “ _Shit_. Sorry. I… yeah, sorry, Sam. Dinner, uh. Whenever you want. Cas said he was gonna get some wine, but I’m pretty sure that when he says that he means vodka.”

Sam rolled his eyes at that, like Dean had expected him to, weak a joke as that was. But his little brother’s expression was still soft and careful when he put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on the heels of his fancy patent leather shoes. “Better him picking the wine than you,” Sam pointed out.

“Damn straight,” Dean agreed, with a snort. “We can’t all be fancy.”

Which wasn’t the right thing to say at _all_ , because Sam’s eyes went soft and wide again. “Is… are _you guys_ okay?”

 _Fuck_.

“Yeah, Sam. We’re fine.” Better than fine. Dean had _just_ gotten Cas to move out of the shitty, expensive rental in the South Loop he’d been staying at for the past couple of months, and in with Dean at his house in Chatham. They’d _just_ gotten him settled and unpacked and not tripping over shoes in the middle of the night, because Cas never wanted to turn on the lights to go to the bathroom even when he woke up stupidly early.

For a second Dean really thought Sammy was just gonna leave it be. He really did. Sam even shuffled his feet a little like he’d forgotten he was the size of the Willis Building.

But because Sam Winchester, _consiglieri_ , made his entire goddamned _career_ verbally poking things that no sane person should ever be poking, he didn’t just leave it be. He actually carefully _sat down_ on the cleanest spot on a garage bench, one of the three stretching along one of the side walls. “What’s going on, Dean?”

That was Sammy’s ‘I’m listening, even though I am sure you’re going to be wrong,’ tone. Dean considered just how nasty Sam’s dry-cleaning bill would be if Dean put his oil-covered hands on that white suit he was wearing.

Dean really had no intention of bitching about this crap to Sam. He… well, he hadn’t needed to go bitching to Sam about a whole lot of things, not in a little while. Work, sure, that was always gonna be what it was gonna be. Dean liked his job, and he fucking _loved_ his _famiglia_ , but things had been pretty tense for a little while, there.

Especially after Alastair was found dead in a Ravenswood alley, far North and way out of Outfit territory. Nasty way about it, too: his throat cut, both hamstrings along with it, and a deep slash right across the healed wound where Cas had gotten him in the back the last time. He’d tried to get away.

No-one could pin it on Dean, though, even though Ketch had tried. Shit, Dean couldn’t even blame the smarmy asshole for that. _He_ would have been his own prime suspect. But the truth was that Dean Winchester hadn’t actually wasted a single brain fart over Alastair since he and Cas had put the guy in the hospital the first time, and he’d had been at Jeffrey Pub when that shit had gone down, having a drink and flirting wildly with a couple of the queens after their latest show.

(There were _pictures._ Really freakin’ embarrassing pictures, Jesus. Dean hadn’t been all that drunk but he’d gotten held down for ‘em, okay?! Cas had actually snorted through his nose when he’d seen them.)

And Cas? As far as anyone knew, Castiel Novak had been sitting for some kind of accountant license transfer _exam_.

So they’d rumbled a little, and Ketch had made noises about ‘consequences’, and there sure as fuck had been _consequences_ all right.

Even if they _had_ come on a little piece of paper and a spreadsheet.

(Dammit.)

These days, with Ketch gone, the North Gang was too busy eating itself to get in the Outfit’s face, much less make a fuss about a certain Parakh who’d come to stay in Chicago.

Dean hadn’t asked Cas if he or the Brotherhood had had anything to do with that little Alastair show, and Cas hadn’t offered. Dean hadn’t lost a moment’s sleep over it, either. And if Cas had tumbled Dean onto his belly the next morning and fucked him until Dean’s voice broke, well, sure as Hell no-one had been complaining about _that_.

Dean wasn’t sure if this was the calm before the storm or the snow-shoveling after it, he just didn’t have the brains to predict that shit, but whatever it was, work had been _fine_. And coming home from work, coming home to _Cas,_ well…

He hadn’t lived with someone he could talk business with since he and Sam had still been growing up with _Bobby._ He hadn’t expected he ever _would_ have someone like that, because as everyone knew, Dean Winchester didn’t fuck with Mafia, and he kind of didn’t date _anyone_.

That was over and gone, now, blown out of the water so fast it should’ve come with a sonic boom like the Blue Angels over the lake during the summer air show.

And it had been really _awesome._

He and Cas came to work together in the mornings. Cas had his own car, but if Dean had his way the guy was never getting into that little Subaru again (that thing was practically made of _plastic,_ it just wasn’t safe). So if Dean was planning to be out on the streets rather than in the garage, he dropped off Cas before he went. They met in the evening to go home. Sometimes they went out together and got a drink and hung out—sometimes with friends, and sometimes just them, and sometimes they didn’t go out at all. Sometimes Dean went out at night to take care of business, and sometimes he just went out to _be,_ when the city was too far under his skin and he had to drive his way through it to get it out.

He'd thought that might bother Cas—shit, it’d sure as hell bothered Lisa. Cas just smiled, right in the corners of his eyes where no-one else could see it, and told him “Be safe. Call if you want me to join you. I would like to learn the city, as well.”

“You mean places that _aren’t_ the Art Institute or that damned Bean? I think you just like seein’ your pretty blue eyes reflected in it,” Dean joked.

Castiel rolled those pretty blue eyes. “Oh. If you are not going by Millennium Park, I am not interested.”

And Dean laughed, but Cas just patted his ass briefly on his way out the door.

So yeah, he’d have been dead wrong about that bothering Cas, too.

Dean hadn’t thought he was lonely before any of this—he hadn’t _felt_ lonely—but nowadays, he could pretty damned definitively say he _wasn’t._

And it was… good. It was really good, actually.

That was part of why Dean was so _pissed off_.

“I’m sick of it, okay?” Dean burst out, loudly, a little to his horror. “I’m just really fucking _sick of it_.”

Sam’s eyes went wide. “Of… oh. Oh, _shit_.” He sat straight up, rigid, and Dean could almost see _numbers_ and _words_ and probably some kind of legalese start moving behind his eyes—which was… weird, since they weren’t talking Outfit business right now, not really. “Dean, what did Castiel _do_?”

Dean blinked. What? “Cas?” He stared at Sam, the tail end of his irritation waving aimlessly in the air before it dissipated. As far as Dean knew, Cas was still in the back office, chewing down numbers like he was hungry for them. Sam would know that better than anyone, he’d been really relieved to hand that part of the Outfit’s business over to someone who actually knew what he was doing. “He didn’t do anything.”

Lately. That Dean knew about. Sometimes he did wake up to find Cas gone from bed. And they had a lot of hydrogen peroxide in the house.

Sam’s eyes got wider. “Oh, shit. Okay, then what did _you_ do?”

“ _Huh?”_ Dean demanded.

(Okay, he was maybe a little flattered that Sam had asked what Cas had done wrong first, but what the fuck?)

“I’m just… you’re sick of living together already?” Sam looked genuinely _pained_. “Look, Dean… dammit. I know it’s… you’ve lived by yourself for a long time, moving in with someone _is_ a big change, it’s—we can find Cas another place, it doesn’t have to be—”

Oh.

The little snorting laugh slipped out before Dean had the chance to swallow it. He held up a hand to stop Sammy’s Dr. Phil, Realtor impression, but that just made Sam look really suspiciously at Dean’s grimed-up palm, and Dean’s snorting laugh turned into a real one.

Yeah, okay, he could see where Sam had gotten that from. He also wasn’t gonna argue that point: if he and Cas went down in a ball of flames, Dean could not promise either of their families were gonna be adults about this shit. He wasn’t even sure that Gabriel Novak _was_ an adult half the time. The enormous fucking fallout _would_ make Sam’s job really difficult, so yeah, Sammy kind of had a professional stake in making sure that Dean and Cas did _not_ kill each other.

“Jesus, Sammy, stop, you’re gonna give yourself an ulcer,” Dean chuckled, shaking his head. “That’s not what I meant. I _like_ living with Cas.”

Sam’s deep sigh and the way his shoulders relaxed should have been really insulting.

It was hard for Dean to even _think_ of the reason for his bad mood, though, much less say it out loud. Dean chewed the words over, and when he finally spat them out they were just as mushy as they’d be if they had been food. “I’m just really, _really_ fucking tired of people asking me when we’re gonna get married,” he growled.

“Oh.” Sam blinked. Then, in a tone of divine revelation: “ _Oh_. Oh, that’s what you meant… _ohhhh_.”

Dean sat down next to Sam—not too close; who the _hell_ wore a white suit voluntarily? Sammy must have been meeting with one of Crowley’s pretentious fuckers again, or something—with a loud, annoyed huff. “Yeah. _Shit_. Sorry I bit your head off, it’s just…”

“I kind of get it,” Sam admitted. “That’s weird. Really? People ask you?”

Dean was pretty sure the look he gave Sam said “ _No, I’m joking about this crap._ ” This was what was _not fun_ about working for an organization where either someone was so scared of him they pissed their pants when he laughed a little too hard, or they’d given him the sex talk or been in charge of getting him to school when their dad was too drunk or too bloody to get it done himself.

“Okay, okay.” Sam held both his hands up. “But you have to admit, what with Castiel, um, coming out for _you_ and all—”

Dean blinked.

Sam rolled his eyes. “ _Yes_ , Dean, we all sort of figured that one out. _No-one_ in the Novak Bratva knew he liked guys. I’m sure there’s more than one person out there who thinks you, I don’t know, _converted_ him—"

Dean scowled. “That is not an actual thing, Sam.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I _know_ ,” he huffed, in the tone of someone who hadn’t just heard that talk, he’d _given_ that talk. “But the whole story _is_ a weirdly fairy tale kind of romantic, don’t you think? You know.” And there was an annoying little shit who hadn’t hit his growth spurt until sixteen looking out from behind Sammy’s big hazel eyes. “You two making like you hated each other, but sneaking around together behind your respective families’ backs for _months_ until someone from a rival outfit came after one of you—"

Just because Sam was Dean’s little brother didn’t mean that Dean wasn’t capable of fucking him up. Dean stabbed a finger at him, about six inches from putting oil stains on Sam’s tie that were _never_ coming out. “ _One. More. Word._ ”

Shit. He wasn’t blushing, was he? He couldn’t be.

Sam put up both his hands and edged away on the bench. “I’m just saying. It could be worse? A lot worse.” Sam added, carefully.

“How?” Dean asked, looking down and absently starting to scrub oil from the creases of his knuckles with a rag.

“They could be asking _Castiel_.”

Dean blinked, then grunted out a reluctant laugh. Asking that bad-natured Bratva? Oh, yeah, that’d happen _never_. Cole had tried his posturing bullshit with Cas within three _days_ of Cas settling into Chicago, because Cole had all the balls and no sense to fill them with. No-one else had tried it since. “They’d probably be dead,” Dean answered.

“Yes, Dean,” Sam drawled. “Yes, ‘dead’ _would_ be the actual definition of ‘worse.’ So… I mean, you guys _are_ okay? I mean, I was pretty sure I’d’ve already heard you complain if he did things like leave his socks on the kitchen floor or not rinse the recycling—”

Dean snorted, but a good bit of his pissed-off puddle had drained, now. “I’m not that much of a neat freak, and _who_ leaves socks on the kitchen floor other than you, Sammy? No-one, that’s who, because Cas is a sane and normal person—”

Both of Sam’s eyebrows hit his hairline.

Dean amended that to, “—a person normal enough to _not_ take his socks off big stinky Sasquatch feet in the kitchen.”

“Awww, _Dean._ ” Sam cooed. “Sounds like love to me—"

Cas’s little office—it _was_ a real office, even if it wasn’t very big—was just above and overlooking the garage. The door to it always squeaked as it came open (Dean had been meaning to rehang it before Cas took it over, but right now it was as good as a doorbell, ‘cause otherwise Cas _still_ moved freakishly quietly). It squeaked now, and Dean swallowed the rest of whatever he’d been meaning to say.

He was sure it hadn’t been nice. It might have meant the Outfit needed to find a new _consiglieri_.

“Dean,” Cas said, his voice absently gravelly as he didn’t look up from the tablet he was flicking a finger over, “I’m going to Printer’s Row to pick up the wine order, what time are we—"

He paused and cocked his head, looking down at them both from the top of the metal stairway that led down into the garage’s public spaces.

This was probably Dean’s favorite look on Cas—not all spic and span and suited up the way he started the day, but just like this: suit jacket off, tie twisted backwards (he _still_ tied it in a square knot) with wrinkles in his button-down. He had his cuffs unbuttoned and pushed up just a little, and the black strap of one of his wrist sheaths was peeking out in contrast to his tanned, slender wrists.

Dean had been wrong, Cas _did_ actually comb his hair in the mornings. He had to admit, he’d blinked and maybe even been a little disappointed the first time Cas had come into the garage and Dean had seen his hair neatly slicked back. But Cas always ran his fingers through it absently as he worked—which, by the end of the day, kind of made him look like he’d been fucked over his desk during his lunch hour.

Dean would manage to talk him into that one day, he really would.

“Hello, Sam.” Cas blinked, and his head bobbed to the side. “Oh… am I late? I had thought—”

Cas looked between him and Sam—and considering the way they’d _both_ cut off talking the moment they’d heard the squeak of the door, it was probably pretty damned clear what the topic of conversation had been. His eyes didn’t narrow, but one dark eyebrow tilted upwards in that bossy demand of an expression.

“Yeah, we’re talkin’ about you, muffin top,” and Dean flashed him a bright, toothy smile, ‘cause, well, he was still Dean Winchester, thanks.

 _Obviously_ the pet name was fucking absurd. Dean was pretty sure that Cas had never had a muffin top in his entire life, and under that creased-up button-down he _still_ had a six-pack. Dean had always loved Cas’s lickable surprise of a body under those baggy clothes, but he kind of had new appreciation for it after seeing what he did to _maintain_ it.

(Waking up to him doing shirtless pull-ups in the doorframe? _Without_ a pull-up bar? Holy fuck _yes._ Yeah, Cas hadn’t stayed on that doorframe for long.)

This time, Cas’s blue eyes _did_ narrow, just slightly. Then his gaze skimmed up Dean’s body, in his old beat-up jeans and even older grease-stained t-shirt, coveralls thrown over him and tied at his waist rather than over his arms because he just couldn’t be bothered when it was late August in Chicago and Bobby’s garage wasn’t airconditioned. His eyes came to rest not on Dean’s face, or his arms, or his chest, or his thighs.

“I see,” Cas said, finally, his eyes resting pointedly on where Dean’s coveralls met his shirt, just around his waist. His eyes skimmed where Dean’s belly might have been pooching out a little—just from how he was sitting slumped over and against the wall. “Hmm.”

Because Castiel Novak still hated pet names, and he was _still_ a sonofabitch.

Sam choked.

Dean sucked in his breath—not his gut, just his breath, dammit—and pushed himself straight, glaring. “What?” he demanded. “Fuck you, Novak. It’s a compliment, the muffin top’s the best part of the thing.”

“If you say so, Dean.” Cas’s lips didn’t _quite_ twitch into a smile, but the corners of his eyes tightened just a little in the smuggest little crease imaginable.

Dean sometimes _still_ didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or throw down with Cas or just pin him to the floor and fuck him screaming. “You are such a—"

Cas’s smile widened enough to touch the corners of his mouth. He didn’t look away from Dean’s eyes. He rarely did. “Sam, what time would you like us to arrive tonight?”

Dean could see Sam, beside him, looking back and forth between them. He could only see his brother out of the corner of his eyes, though, ‘cause Dean wasn’t gonna be the one to break gaze with this blue-eyed, beautiful sonofabitch first.

Sam sighed, and Dean thought that his little brother was raising a hand to massage his own temples. “I really thought this was going to get _better_ after he moved here,” he muttered.

*_*_*_*

Dean was planning to be on his best behavior for dinner, this time. He really was. Hell, he’d even chew with his mouth closed. He got it, Sam’s new girlfriend was respectable—heck, she was a _nurse_ —and all she knew was that Sam was a consultant lawyer for the “family business” with a small claims practice on the side. Dean could play at being respectable for a night.

Sam had gotten pretty burned by what had gone down with that Ruby girl. Dean hadn’t liked her, and he’d made no bones about that, but no matter what Sammy thought, that hadn’t had anything to do with her being inside of the Maniac Disciples up by Humboldt Park. It had had everything to do with her almost getting Sam hooked all over again.

Still, that wasn’t why Dean had taken her out.

He didn’t enjoy killing, he probably never would, but some people just needed doing and Dean didn’t regret putting a knife through her neck. He only regretted that he’d had to do it in front of Sam.

Hard not to take all that shit personally when _she’d_ been the one to try selling them out to Lucien Novak.

So yeah, Dean had to admit, he was a little… _concerned_ by just how normal Jessica sounded when Sam talked about her, but if Sammy wanted to try the apple pie façade again for a little bit, more power to him. Sam always _had_ been better at playing at the straight and narrow than he was.

(No, Castiel, Dean wasn’t going to respond to the arch of that eyebrow. He’d used that expression intentionally, dammit.)

But Dean had been in a bad mood since the word go this morning, he was in a _weird_ mood, and it’d been a long time since he’d made a pretty girl blush and giggle. So this—sitting a foursome at Sam’s little dining table with fancy order-in from Prime & Provisions—was, surprisingly, kind of nice.

Even if Sam rolled his eyes so hard at Dean’s side order that Dean was surprised his irises ever came back down again.

Dean didn’t want to hear it. Sam might not have ordered a salad except as a side this time, but seriously: who ordered _tuna tartare_ from a steakhouse? The only reason Dean wasn’t trying to hold an intervention was that Sam was using the potato chips that came with it as his utensil, and that was his little brother right there in a nutshell.

Dean knew he was going to like Jess Moore when she looked at Dean’s side—a giant piece of bacon drizzled with dark chocolate and maple syrup, to go with his surf and turf—and cheerfully asked, “Can I try a bit?”

And _not_ just because it made Sam sigh so hard Dean thought his hair might float away.

Cas looked like he was having a good time, too—he’d greeted Jess and introduced himself all soft and low, “Hello, Ms. Moore—I’m Castiel,” with an awkward little bob of his chin that reminded Dean _so much_ of the first time he’d met Cas that he almost got a stupidly reflexive hard-on right there. He couldn’t even blame Jess for the way she’d beamed at Cas like she wanted to pinch his cheeks, ‘cause in moments like this, _goddamn._ Cas was shy and quiet and polite and _so_ fucking cute.

But Dean’s little brother and Dean’s soft-spoken Russian whatever-they-were—‘boyfriends’ was _never_ going to come out of either of their mouths—were sitting side by side across the table now, and they seemed to be having a good time, too. Cas was happily eating his New York strip with lavender salt and a big pile of whipped potatoes—all the things a sane human being ordered from a steakhouse. Sam was scooping up raw fish, and they seemed to be chuckling together about some joke about…

Holy shit, they really were laughing about something to do with tax code.

Considering that Dean had just gotten Cas a new pair of gloves for his _other_ job after the last ones had ended up stained past repair, sometimes Dean really wondered how the fuck this was his life.

Dean winked at Jess—definitely a ‘Jess,’ not a ‘Jessica’—and whispered, nodding at the two nerds across the table, “Hey, what’s the difference between an accountant and a lawyer?”

Jess’s eyes narrowed, laughing at him along with all the rest of her face. She was kind of classic good-girl, rosy-cheeked and pretty, all curls and lips—not Dean’s type, but she was cute. He could see the appeal. “What?”

“The accountant knows he’s boring.”

She didn’t even try to hide her bark of laughter at that, and she wasn’t quiet about it, either—tossing her head back in a riot of blonde, one hand on Dean’s shoulder. Cas glanced over at them out of the corner of his eyes, cocking his head, and Dean just grinned and toasted him with his glass of wine. (He wasn’t going to admit it to Cas, but the stuff was actually not too bad.)

Jess was still grinning when she nudged him back. “You know, I took my car to a mechanic, once, when it was making this annoying whining sound? You know what he told me?”

Dean waggled his eyebrows and leered. “Yeah, what?”

“That I needed to stop listening to Taylor Swift.”

Okay, yeah, Dean knew when he’d been had. Because halfway through him being stuck on the fact that she’d insulted Taylor Swift and the realization that there was no _way_ that had been a random out-of-the-blue pick, Jess added, with a big-eyed whisper, “I was going to say Led Zeppelin, but I didn’t want you to _actually_ hate me.”

Dean’s laugh caught up with him hard enough that he slapped the table a few times.

“I’m concerned,” he heard Cas mutter to Sam.

“ _You’re_ the one dating him,” Sam answered, and oh, it was _on_ now.

“Sammy’d better keep you,” Dean chuckled to Jess, wiping his eyes. Hey, if Sammy’d already told her about Dean and Led Zeppelin and Taylor Swift—dammit, those songs were so _catchy_ —then he was pretty sure Sam already meant to keep her.

She blinked at him. “You call him Sammy? I didn’t think he’d let anyone call him that.”

Dean leaned in close and smiled, long and slow.

Yeah, Sam was going to _regret_ spilling those beans.

Look, Dean really _was_ planning to be on his best behavior. And he sure as fuck had been, hadn’t he? Except, well, crap, he’d always been kind of flirty, that was just how he _was_.

And it wasn’t like Jess was taking him seriously—she was so damned _proud_ to be Sam’s girl. She was trying so hard to be this cocky hardass about it, but she just kind of _lit up_ when she talked about Dean’s little brother.

Good pick, Samuel. This one got the big brother seal of approval.

Dean really didn’t think much about how close he and Jess were sitting so they could talk together about the moose without Sam overhearing—or the fact that, yeah, Dean _was_ sitting and whispering with Sam’s pretty new girlfriend, and she was laughing and blushing right back at him.

Until he looked up and Sam was wearing a smile that could’ve cut glass.

“So, hey, Dean. You and Cas picked a date yet for the wedding?” Sam asked, cheerfully, leaning back in his seat with one hand resting, casual as fuck, on the back of Cas’s chair.

“Oh!” Jess breathed, looking between them and brightening. “Oh, _congratulations!_ ”

The owlet-fallen-out-of-the-nest look on Castiel Novak’s face, Dean thought, would’ve been darling enough to go on a Mastercard commercial under any other circumstance.

Well.

Any circumstance that didn’t involve Dean Winchester wanting to _murder_ his little brother.

*_*_*_*

After about five minutes of dead silence in the Impala as they cruised back south down Lakeshore Drive, Dean reached over and tapped on the radio just… because.

Ordinarily none of this would have freaked Dean out, much. Cas was quiet, and he’d _always_ been quiet. He had his head turned in Dean’s direction, and he was just watching the flash of lights and cars past the window and the windshield as they started heading back south, but that wasn’t abnormal for him either. There might have been more than a few times when Cas was riding shotgun that Dean took Lakeshore towards Sammy’s duplex up in Lincoln Park, rather than taking the sometimes less congested city roads or the Dan Ryan. The view was a lot nicer, especially from the passenger seat.

From the way Cas always looked out over the lake whenever the blue-gray stretch of the water came into sight, he was pretty sure Cas missed the shoreline of Brighton Beach—even though he had never said as much. But in the dark, there wasn’t anything to see there but night sky, the water blending right into the horizon.

Cas had never said much of anything about missing anything, to be honest. Hell, _Dean_ had complained more about Cas relocating to Chicago than Cas had.

(That had probably surprised a grand total of _no-one_.)

But Dean’s shoulders and stomach wound tighter and tighter as they rolled past the glittering stretch of buildings and high-rises to Dean’s left, silhouetted against the night sky—that was one of the best damned views in the world, Dean didn’t care what anyone said about the New York skyline—and Cas didn’t even turn in that direction to watch it through his own window. He just kept looking out past Dean, over the dark infinity that was Lake Michigan at night, and not actually looking at _Dean_ at all.

They were cruising through the Grant Park area just in time to catch the last major display at the Buckingham Fountain, lit orange and pink with the sound of the music through the speakers rattling against the Impala’s frame. But Cas didn’t ask Dean to stop, even though Dean would be the first to admit that for showy shit the hundreds of colored lights and the fountain jets hitting high in the air lit by laser beams really was something.

Cas normally really liked that kind of thing, the giant nerd. He hadn’t said a word about visiting the damned Bean, either.

Dean gave up by the time they passed Grant, and stuck them back on the highway. Cas redirected his shadowy eyes to the taillights in front of them without so much as a word.

By the time they pulled into Dean’s garage, his mouth felt sour and dry, and he was so angry at Sammy that he didn’t even know what to do with it. It wasn’t like he could shoot his little brother, and he wasn’t on tap to shoot anyone else.

Shit, Dean was not good at talking this kind of crap through, and what was he supposed to say anyway?

Cas _still_ hadn’t said a single damned word by the time they made it into the bedroom and Dean had hung up his Colt on its peg on his side of the bed; Cas was finishing emptying his pockets, putting his shorter knife down on the bureau—hunting length, Damascus steel, walnut handle, capped on the end with a steel bolster—when Dean caught his elbow.

“Hey,” he managed, and cleared his throat. “Are we… are we okay?”

Cas blinked at him, slowly. Dean couldn’t read his face. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

Dean sighed and scratched the back of his neck with his other hand, hard enough that he knew he’d probably left a scratch of pink across the soft skin. His nails skated across a just slightly tender spot—he probably had a hickey he couldn’t see, because Cas really liked leaving those on him. The asshole. “Just… y’know,” he mumbled. “Sorry ‘bout Sammy.”

To his surprise, Cas’s lips curved in that small, careful smile Dean had gotten so used to teasing out of him. He pulled his elbow out from Dean’s grip, but he came right back and squeezed Dean’s fingers, gently. “Dean, you have met Gabriel. He tries very hard to be more of an asshole in every conversation than your brother has probably been in the whole _year_ since I first met him.”

Dean snorted out a laugh. “Pretty sure Sammy hit his quota tonight.” He shook his head. He wouldn’t even say that Sam had been out of line, because on the scale of out-of-line that was just teasing—precisely _because_ Sam knew it’d piss Dean off. Shit, he said worse than that to Sam _daily_. “What the fuck.”

But in a lot of ways he and Cas _were_ still kind of new, as much as they weren’t. As much as they knew each other’s bodies inside and out—and _how_ ; whoever had said that familiarity bred contempt knew absolutely _nothing_ about getting fucked into next Tuesday by someone who knew all of Dean’s buttons—they were still figuring out what the hell ‘together’ meant.

“I’m fine, Dean. I had a good time. I just… I find interacting with new people tiring.” The shake of Cas’s head looked real and loose enough that some of the tension snapped out of Dean’s shoulders with a twang. “Honestly, I’m surprised Sam didn’t say anything like that sooner. He _is_ your brother, after all.”

Dean frowned. “What?”

“His expression every time he found one of the clauses that Gabriel tried to sneak in was very precious.” Cas just chuckled, softly, at Dean’s confusion—Dean hadn’t been at the final contract talks, Cas knew that; he had shit to do on the streets and numbers weren’t his style—and cocked his head. “Dean, you… _are_ aware that Gabriel tried to extort a dowry out of Bobby when they first started negotiating my transfer here?”

Dean dropped Cas’s hand. Accidentally, yeah, just mostly out of shock, but he still dropped it. He maybe dropped it just a little too hard. “ _Fuck_ no,” he blurted out.

And then Dean bit his tongue. Okay, shit. No. Dean was an asshole, yeah, but he wasn’t normally that much of one, and it wasn’t like—

“Mm,” noted Castiel, and he looked a little less amused. “I… see.” He rolled his shoulders, one at a time, while Dean was still stumbling through his head and tried to figure out whether the right thing to do was reach out and grab up Cas’s hand again or if that was going to get him a knife to the kidney. But he had to do _something_. “I’m going to shower. You should go to bed. Good night, Dean.”

 _Shit._ “Wait.” Dean reached up and started shucking his overshirt, hastily. “I’ll join you.”

“I don’t recall inviting you,” Cas told him, proud up to the tilt of his chin, all the way steady and cold again. “Also, you think my habit of showering before bed is ridiculous.”

That was true, Dean did think that. Half the time after they got into bed, he and Cas had sex—so yeah, a clean Cas to lick was great and all, but they were just gonna get dirty all over again. Then Cas went running every morning, and then showered after anyway; Dean really didn’t see the _point._

“I’m joining you anyway,” he insisted.

Cas huffed, and turned his back, striding into the bathroom.

The shower was already hissing by the time Dean got naked himself and came in, Cas’s clothes folded up neatly and set on the toilet lid with his socks on top. Dean didn’t know why he paused for a second to study them, that neat little pile—Dean _was_ pretty tidy, but he didn’t fold his clothes like that before they were going to go into the laundry, much less ball up his socks. These were the things that a person only got to know when two people _lived together_.

The two hiltless throwing knives in their holsters, neatly lined up along the sink? Okay, Dean had known about those long before Cas had moved in. The tooled leather cuff Cas wore at his ankle, the one with a flat, hand-smoothed lockpick set secreted away into tiny little sleeves in it, was sitting next to Dean’s toothbrush. Dean had one, now, too, a gift from Cas—fancy little designs on the warm, soft brown leather, a silver buckle to close it.

It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever given Dean. And he _wasn’t_ being sarcastic.

A thin silver chain of a necklace was coiled in the loop of Cas’s ankle cuff, the small Hand of Fatima amulet tangled with the equally small, simple silver cross. Dean put a finger on it; it was still warm from Cas’s skin.

“For protection,” Cas had said, the first time Dean had gotten his shirt open and seen the pretty new addition shining just underneath the hollow of his collarbone. “We’re very superstitious. A going-away present from my Avoritet and his wife.“

 _Not_ his brother and sister-in-law. Dean understood. Someone in the… what was it? The Prestupnaya? Had really, really not been happy about Cas coming out.

Dean remembered what _he’d_ said, too— he’d teased. “Aren’t you worried someone’s going to choke you with it?”

Cas, in his truest fashion, had just blinked at him. “No, they’re breakaway links,” he’d answered, seriously as ever.

They’d both ignored, as they normally did, the fact that Cas really had left his family and his whole goddamned _life_ behind without so much as batting a long dark eyelash. No-one would have expected any different from Castiel “Angel” Novak.

Dean hadn’t.

He hadn’t felt guilty about that until this very moment.

He didn’t doubt that Cas already knew he was in here, but Dean rapped his knuckles on the edge of tile just past the edge of the shower curtain anyway. “I’m coming in, don’t shoot,” he joked, like he always did.

Since there was no exasperated loud huff and gravelly retort of “Dean, I have many more effective ways of incapacitating you,” he knew this wasn’t gonna be great.

Cas glanced at Dean when he came into the shower, without so much as the kind of appreciative up-and-down Dean normally got whenever he was naked, even if neither of them was in the mood. Then he turned his back and just stood in the spray with his face turned up towards the shower head, eyes closed, breathing so quietly Dean couldn’t even hear it over the water.

The silence in the Impala hadn’t been uncomfortable, not really. This one, though, this one was. Cas was hogging the water—very intentionally, Dean was pretty sure. He looked about as huggable as a velociraptor.

Cas had to be here, in Chicago. In a lot of ways, Cas had to be here _because_ of Dean. Dean didn’t feel guilty about that part of it—Cas had made his own choices just like Dean had. He’d known exactly what the fuck he was doing, and he’d done it anyway. That was pretty much the Castiel Novak way of things, and Jesus, Mary and Joseph help whoever tried to get in Cas’s way.

It was one of the things that Dean liked best about him.

But their world wasn’t just hotels and back rooms and B&E into Dean’s bedroom anymore (and Dean _still_ hadn’t figured out how Cas had done it, goddammit). Yeah, it still was sex against the wall or on the floor sometimes, a rug burn here and there, but it was folding laundry, too. It was Netflix and chill (and having to explain to Cas what the fuck that expression actually meant, Jesus Christ. He’d thought Bobby was going to hack up his spleen he was laughing so hard). It was making out in Baby’s front seat in a parking lot, but then driving home so Cas could learn how to roast a chicken.

(Cas hovered, in the kitchen. It was goddamned annoying.)

But Dean, well… he _liked_ it. He liked waking up to a hot Brooklyn-born Russian making coffee wearing just a pair of Dean’s boxers—and he made it just for Dean, because Cas preferred strong black tea. He liked having Cas fresh-shaven in the morning and bristled up by evening, tapping just one finger along with the music in Dean’s Baby as they drove home. He liked complaining about the fact that Cas was _picky_ about the smell of his shampoo.

He liked Cas sighing and picking up more frozen peas for the line of Dean’s jaw when he got into it with some of the Mambos. He liked carefully stitching up a thin, narrow knife wound on the outside of Cas’s right arm because it wasn’t at a good angle for Cas to do it himself, even if Dean was chewing him out all the while for being dumb enough to get snagged like that.

And _no,_ Cas, answering “I have that because I raised my arm to block, else it would’ve been my face,” did _not_ make it better!

But having folk trying to crash them together like cymbals, over and over? That wasn’t _them_.

Dean didn’t want this weird, careful thing that they had to break under someone else’s pressure. This was too good for that. He _wanted_ this too much for that.

And that meant that when _Dean_ was the one doing the breaking, he also had to be the one to put things back together.

“M’sorry,” he said, honestly. He wanted to talk about this about as much as he wanted to lick the barrel of his Colt. But he wanted to sleep next to a pissed-off Castiel about as much as he wanted to eat a bullet from that Colt. “I really didn’t mean it like that.”

“You didn’t say anything that you have to apologize for,” Cas rumbled.

Right. Nope, the iceman definitely cometh. Dean reached for a trace of irritation inside himself, but he didn’t find it. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “It… was a joke, right? The Novak trying to get a dowry for you, that kind of thing.”

“Yes, Dean. It was one of my brother’s jokes.” Cas didn’t look up and over his shoulder. His shoulders and the dipped line of his neck were so calm it sent a chill down Dean’s spine. “Not that Gabriel wouldn’t have taken it if he could get away with it, but I’m quite sure marriage to you—or to anyone—was never a condition of my relocation here.”

“Good, ‘cause I know that’s how a lot of families do it, but that would’ve been pretty fucked up,” Dean told Cas’s back, honestly. He watched the water flow down Cas’s fucking _lovely_ smooth skin, the way it licked down his tan lines at his shoulders and the deep divot of his back just before it curved into his ass, but he didn’t try and touch him. “An’ Cas, you can be pissed at me if you want. You probably _should_ be pissed at me, ‘cause that was a real dumb thing for me to say. But you don’t get to pretend that me being a fuck-up is the beginning and end of it, ‘cause you don’t want to be forced to marry me any more than I want to be forced to marry you.”

There was another long shower-spattered silence before Castiel sighed.

He wasn’t smiling when he turned back around to face Dean and backed up enough towards the front of the shower to let Dean a little under the spray with him—just enough to wet Dean’s chest, not enough to get his shoulders or hair. But he wasn’t making like he was going to garrote Dean in his sleep, either, so that was something. And he was the one who reached over to set a hand on Dean’s waist, running his thumb carefully up and down the line of Dean’s ribs.

“No,” Cas finally agreed—not agreed—whatever. “You’re right.”

The relief of that first damp little touch surprised Dean, he had to admit—it was pretty rare still for Cas to be the one to initiate even the little touches. Especially the little touches. But it was nice. Water rolled down Cas’s shoulder and his arm, trickled cooler from Cas’s fingers down Dean’s hip and the side of his thigh.

Dean completed the touch with one hand, starting at Cas’s shoulder, letting his fingertips brush down Cas’s smooth, wet bicep, tuck into the bend of his elbow, trace the white lines of the scars on his forearms. He followed the curve of his muscles outwards and fingered the thin pink scar of the knife wound he'd doctored, fading into Cas’s skin already. That got him a little twitch—Cas’s sides weren’t ticklish at all, but certain parts of his arms were.

Choices were really damned funny things. Dean had had lots of choices—he got that, he knew how lucky he’d been. Cas had never seemed to mind that he never seemed to have as many.

“Do you, uh.” Dean had to clear his throat twice before he could get out the words. “Do you wanna move?”

Cas didn’t blink, and he didn’t jerk, but all the animation that he’d gotten back went out of him like Dean had flipped a switch—his eyes, his face, his fingers. He raised his chin like a knife. “If you would like me to move out, of course I will,” he answered, and his tone was so calm and flat it was like the opening scene of one of those tsunami movies.

Shit, Dean hadn’t said that right at all, had he? Dean almost let go of him again in his shock, but instead, almost like reflex, his hand jerked tighter this time, hard enough to dig nails into skin. But Cas’s arm had gone to stone under him. “What? Fuck, _no,_ Cas! No, I mean…”

Yeah, right now that blue gaze was colder and deadlier than Lake Michigan in February. Dean didn’t _actually_ think Cas would put him floating in the river, but tell that to his spine right this second.

Dean didn’t look away. He swallowed, but he met Cas’s eyes. “Look, I never really asked you. Where in the city _you_ might wanna live.” Probably no-one had, but that didn’t mean that _Dean_ shouldn’t have. “I mean, you didn’t wanna stay in that shitty high-rise rental in the South Loop, no-one would, but, uh. I just…” he shrugged, awkwardly. “I know this isn’t New York.”

“Nowhere is,” Cas answered, and that was no answer at all, either.

Dean bit down on his snark of ‘ _thank God,’_ ‘cause first of all, he really was trying to be better at not blaspheming to Cas’s face, and second of all, _he’d_ opened that door. “We could look for a place in another part of Chi-town, if you want. Or a bigger place? Or smaller, whatever,” he offered. Dean’s house had a second bedroom, though Cas hadn’t ever slept in it. If Dean had his way, Cas never would. “I dunno. The _both_ of us, Cas.”

Cas blinked, slowly, and the mask lifted away—just at the edges. His head tilted, just slightly. “Did I give you the impression I was unhappy with our living situation?”

“Buddy, I’ve stitched you up without anything to numb you up, and you didn’t look unhappy about it,” Dean pointed out, dryly. “You ain’t exactly a complainer.”

Cas didn’t deny it. “Dean, this is your neighborhood.” He cocked his head. “From what I understand, Chatham has been your home for more than a decade. Your neighbors credit you for the fact that there hasn’t been a gun incident in the area in more than five years.”

Dean blinked. Yeah, he knew—they had good reason to think that, ‘cause the Outfit had controlled most of the AK trade in the south suburbs for the past few years, and even the Mambo Kings didn’t want to match their cute little pistols against that—but he didn’t remember ever telling _Cas._

And yeah, it’d hurt something deep inside him to give up his place. Cas wasn’t wrong when he said this was Dean’s home. But if that was what it took to get them to _their_ place, well… okay, then.

Cas arced an eyebrow at him, and this time, his lips tipped up in what was just barely a smile, but his eyes didn’t come with windchill anymore. “Within two weeks of my moving in I’d received at _least_ half a dozen threats to take me out at the kneecaps if I didn’t treat you right, and none of them from the Outfit.” His head tipped just gently to the other side. “One was from the nice lady across the street whose lawn you mow.”

“Oh. Wait, _what_?” Dean felt his face go hot. “ _Shit._ Sorry, I didn’t know that… uh.”

Also, the fact that Mrs. Pettke might’ve threatened Castiel “Angel” Novak, Parakh of the Novak Bratva, of all the damned people? Yeah, she threatened Dean with a broom all the time, but holy shit. Dean would’ve found that hilarious if it hadn’t been so momentarily terrifying.

Cas just shook his head, and this time, his lips did curve in a small smile. “I like Chatham,” Castiel answered simply. “I like the South Side. It has similarities to where I lived in Little Odessa.” His nose wrinkled just a little. “I like having _real people_ as neighbors. Sam’s neighbors are entirely too invested in openly and constantly supporting the fact that we’re both male, and I find that offputting.”

“I dunno, I think it might be ‘cause you’re the prettiest fucking thing they’ve ever come across, Cas.” Dean wasn’t even being sarcastic about that. Daphne Allen had always kind of given Dean the up-and-down eyeball, but her tongue had all but fallen out of her head the first time she’d laid eyes on Cas.

Cas snorted, and raised his chin, running a hand through his hair and slicking it back in a gesture that on anyone else would have been flirty. “And I’m equally sure it’s because the husbands are now reassured that you prefer men and they don’t have to worry about the eyes their wives are making at you, while the wives feel vindicated that you never fell for their advances.”

Yes, Dean Winchester could keep his mouth shut on occasion. Like the one where he wasn’t gonna point out to the stone-cold killer he was sharing a shower with that Dean wasn’t _gay_. Cas knew that, right? Dean was almost sure he’d said it in the guy’s hearing, and if he hadn’t, it sure as hell wasn’t a secret _anywhere._ But that was another conversation they’d never actually had.

Cas smirked. “I’m not deaf, Dean. I know you’re bisexual. If you feel the need to inform _Sam’s neighbors_ of it, be my guest.”

Dean let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and poked Cas in the ribs with a muttered, “Yeah, yeah.” But he left his hand there anyway, feathering his fingers up and down the delicate arching blades of Cas’s side. “Hey. You, uh. Ever thought about it, though?” he asked, absently, admiring the way the water gleamed on Cas’s fucking _fantastic_ body, trickled lovingly down a tricep, pooled in the crook of his elbow.

“Being bi?” Cas answered, with an eyebrow arched so high upwards it nearly merged with his wet hair. “Assuredly _no_.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “No, asshole. Getting married.”

Alright, so the whole dowry thing might’ve still been on his mind.

Both of Castiel’s eyebrows had an emergency meeting with his hairline, and that wasn’t just Dean’s sexy, surprised little owl right there, that was a whole _flock_ of them.

Dean wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t love that expression on Cas’s face—he really did, _goddamn_ —so it took Dean a second too long to realize _why_ one of the most poker-faced guys he’d ever met was making it this time. And why all of a sudden those high cheekbones were frosting with red darker than the warmth of the shower could account for.

“What—not to _me_ , you—I meant in _general, Jesus,_ Cas!” he yelped. Dean thought he should be congratulated for not jumping back _again_.

“Considering the context, you can hardly blame me,” Cas told him, with a flash of exasperation that didn’t manage to hide the way the pink on his cheeks wasn’t fading yet. “But… no. Since you ask. Not of my own volition, anyway.”

Dean frowned, but he made a twirling finger motion. “Of your own… what?”

Yeah, yeah, he knew what ‘volition’ meant. On a day where Cas was feeling like being more of a smartass than normal, Dean knew he’d just set himself up for getting teased about not being born half dictionary the way Cas was. But Cas wasn’t in that mood today.

After one suspicious glance, Cas did turn back around to face the front of the shower again. Dean reached for the shampoo they shared now, and poured a dollop of the peppermint-smelling stuff into his fingers before setting his fingers gently into Cas’s dark, wet hair. Cas made a soft, grumbling sound of reluctant contentment and tipped his head back as Dean rolled suds up and down his scalp with little motions of his fingers.

“Dean, my family is not the Outfit.” Castiel shrugged like that explained everything, the motion of it rippling up and down his back all the way up to the tilt of his head. With his head back like this, and his neck loose, Dean could see Cas’s eyes were still closed. Shower water streaked down his cheekbones. “Until Gabriel took over, I anticipated that at some point Lucien might try to choose a…” he cleared his throat but _didn’t_ raise his hands for air quotes, “politically advantageous wife for me.”

Dean snorted. _Everyone_ bought that Cas toed the line and was a good little badass for the Bratva, forever and ever, amen. Uh-huh. Right. Yeah, just ‘cause Cas let them believe it didn’t make it _true._ He let his nails scratch just gently at Cas’s scalp, and felt that small, happy rumble as much as he heard it “You’d have let him do that?”

Cas opened his eyes a crack and turned just enough to smile over his shoulder—just out of the very corners of his lips with the faintest white flash of teeth, so gorgeous and _vicious_ even smelling like a candy cane, with his hair full of shampoo suds and water beaded bright on his eyelashes.

“You know,” he told Dean, starchy as the goddamned angel they still called him, “I don’t think I ever thanked you for shooting him.”

“Didn’t do it for you, but you’re welcome, I guess,” Dean laughed, and turned back Cas around by the shoulders, pushing him gently back into the water to rinse off. “You’re really fucking _weird_ , man.”

Cas peered back up at him through the shower spray, a couple of inches shorter than Dean, wet and with his hair dripping foam into his ears and down his shoulders, completely unthreatening. The curve of his smile was still a straight razor on soft skin; _still_ one of the most badass men that Dean had ever met. “ _You_ didn’t grow up with him.”

Dean would have said ‘he couldn’t be that bad’ about pretty much anyone else, but Lucifer Novak had turned Sam’s girlfriend against him, tried to take over the Outfit, and, as Cas had pointed out: Dean _had_ shot him. “Why d’you say that?” he asked, curious.

“You would have aimed higher than his knee.”

Cas was _perfectly serious_.

Dean snorted. “Bloodthirsty sonofabitch.” But he took a step forward, following Cas the rest of the way into the shower spray, dousing himself under it rather than just having it spattering on his front.

He was pretty sure he was forgiven when Cas gripped him by the arms and danced them both around in an awkward, completely unsexy squished-together circle so Dean could stand closer to the showerhead and have most of the warm water spray. Cas reached for the—unscented; seriously, Cas was strange—body wash to soap up himself, quick and clinical, then reached over to press a cool smear of it along Dean’s chest before turning Dean around to face the front the same way Dean had done to him early.

He knew he was forgiven when Cas’s strong, soapy fingers framed the small of his back, pressing his thumbs deeply enough into the tense band of Dean’s muscles that Dean felt the tension release with a rubber-band twang and a happy groan.

Dean was feeling looser and sleepy by the time he stepped out of the shower, handing Cas his towel before taking his own (okay, maybe there was something to this whole showering before bed thing). And he really thought that was gonna be it for the day—which was _fine_ ; that was actually fine.

What? They slept in the same bed, sure, but sometimes they fucked, and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they just slept skin to skin, and sometimes they both took position on opposite sides of the mattress in a way that Dean imagined would have made someone think they were mad at each other. (They really weren’t.)

When Cas was in a bad mood—or when he was homesick, though Dean was pretty sure Cas really would slit his throat in his sleep if Dean ever called it that—he didn’t normally want to have sex, but he _did_ want to cuddle. It was kind of hot for that tonight, but what the hell.

So Dean was kind of surprised when, standing beside the bed, Cas leaned his chest against Dean’s back. His skin was still cool and damp, and it felt pretty good. Rather than those thick arms of his wrapping around Dean’s waist, his thumbs skimmed Dean’s hipbones, tickling fingertips on both sides into the creases of his groin.

( _Yeah,_ Dean was pretty sensitive in that spot. He wasn’t _ticklish_ , it just felt really good at certain times and kind of weird in others.)

“You wanna…?” Dean asked, idly, over his shoulder. Cas’s lips brushed against the back of his shoulder, skimmed raspy up the side of his neck.

“Yes,” Cas answered, blunt as ever.

 _Mmmmm_. Well, Dean wasn’t gonna say no to _that_.

“Whose turn is it today?” Cas murmured, his hand lazing its way up and down Dean’s belly, just barely trailing a circle against the base of his soft cock, and Dean shivered and felt himself start to plump up at the light brush of his calluses. _Should’ve known you weren’t a pretty accountant from those hands_ , he thought, kind of shakily. But since Cas _was_ a pretty accountant, there went that theory.

“Mine,” Dean answered, just to be stubborn, and turned around, smirking down at the upward tilt of Cas’s chin. “Pretty sure it’s mine.”

Cas rolled his eyes. “You always say that.”

“Well, you _asked,_ ” Dean pointed out, grinning, and grabbed Cas’s hand up to bite a kiss into the side of his wrist. “Keep rolling your eyes like that, you’re gonna get stuck looking at the inside of your brain.”

He wasn’t even remotely surprised when Cas snatched his hand back, put it on the middle of Dean’s chest and shoved him backwards into the bed. Dean toppled across it with a laugh, and _no_ , he didn’t bounce, because again: memory foam.

“Better the inside of my brain than yours,” Cas huffed, but he followed him down onto the mattress, crawling on his hands and knees.

Only Castiel Novak could make hauling himself onto the bed like that and moving himself up towards the headboard really, _really_ sexy, all shoulders and long back and thick thighs, rather than kind of goofy. Yeah, so Dean liked to watch him, _no-one_ could blame him for that.

He was still licking his lips when Cas crawled up, miles of skin and muscle, tan lines and serious blue eyes, and settled down on top of Dean like he meant to stay.

Not that Dean had any problems with that, either. He ran both hands up Cas’s flanks and let his fingertips dangle in the shallow groove of his spine, rolling their hips together. Cas had slotted one knee between Dean’s, nudged his cock neat as could be right into the crease of Dean’s groin. He wasn’t all the way hard yet. Neither of them were. It was sort of nice just lying around a lot naked and a little bit horny. Dean had gotten to really like it.

But getting from ‘a little bit’ to ‘very’ never took very long. One long grind—a couple of kisses, the tips of their tongues slipping. _Fuck_ , Cas could really kiss.

But Dean knew when to lick, and when to bite—he knew what little spots brightened Cas right up, and which made him go to pieces, and that was never going to get old.

“I wanted to fuck you,” Cas murmured deep, into the angle of Dean’s jaw, and Dean shivered all over.

“Not against that,” Dean agreed, and grazed his teeth against Cas’s earlobe. Cas’s hand tightened on his hip and that by itself almost made Dean want to give in. “But I kinda wanted to take care of you tonight.” Dean mouthed the words into the deep hollow of Cas’s collarbones, and on top of him, Dean’s little Russian killer shivered back. “Please, sweetheart.”

Cas still _really_ didn’t like pet names, not even that one, so he raised his head and gave Dean a flash of icy blue, sharp enough that Dean wondered a little gleefully if they were going to end up tussling tonight anyway. But the ‘please’ always got him just as much as it got Dean. Not that either of them would ever say so.

_“Behave.”_

_“Make me want to.”_

Sometimes Dean couldn’t believe how recent that was. Sometimes he couldn’t believe how long ago it’d been.

This time, though, Cas rolled over onto his stomach as sweet as anyone could want, and, to Dean’s delight, even slotted one knee underneath himself to press upwards and open up the line of his body a little. Dean got up all the way onto his knees to admire the sight of him—firm lean muscle on either side of his spine—the most fucking perfect shoulder blades, like wings curving down into his ribs—a round ass that Dean would dare _anyone_ not to find cute.

“ _Damn,_ ” he sighed, happily, and reached out to _touch_.

When Cas complained about Dean always saying he wanted to top him, he wasn’t wrong; Dean mostly _did_ still say he wanted to. Who wouldn’t, with six feet of fucking sexy spread out on the bed like this under him? Who was stupid enough that they wouldn’t want this gorgeous, deadly guy backing onto his cock like he couldn’t get enough? Sometimes Cas let Dean press him down and take him slow and sweet—and sometimes all Dean could do was hang on for the ride.

Dean could _want_ plenty of things, though, all at the very same time. Sure, he could only _have_ one thing at a time, but just ‘cause he loved bending Cas over and making that deep voice rumble, that didn’t mean he didn’t want to be railed into the mattress by the guy, too. And as far as reminders of just how good it felt to just plain be _fucked_ went, Castiel in the back room of Jeffrey’s that first night had been a five-alarm fire wake-up-call. _Goddamn_.

(Besides, it was the times when Cas _didn’t_ ask first that Dean knew for sure he was gonna have bruises blooming on his hips the next day.)

But the fact was: when Cas topped? He was a goddamned _master_ at it, the kinky bastard, but Dean knew which of them was always in control when Cas had his cock up Dean’s ass, and it wasn’t _Dean_. Sure, Cas got off on fucking Dean breathless, but he only ever really let himself go, let himself sink in and feel and just _enjoy_ it, when he was on the bottom.

Dean really, really wanted him to enjoy it tonight.

He had no idea if Cas knew what the sight of _his guy_ stretched out like this, willing and open, did to Dean—the way it left him hungry and greedy and spinning. Dean didn’t suppose that it mattered if Cas knew, as long as they both got what they wanted out of it.

Dean leaned in and stuck his tongue into the deep dimples Cas had on either side of the small of his back, just below the dip of his waist. He followed the curve of one round cheek, and scraped his teeth over the flat triangle of where Cas’s tailbone curved down between the globes of that fucking _perfect_ ass of his. That got him a little wriggle—that spot was sensitive all on its own, and Dean had spent a good half hour once just tonguing and nibbling and putting little bruising bites around it before Cas lost patience and flipped them over. (Honestly, from the way he’d been squirming Dean had been surprised he’d even lasted that long.)

He spread Cas’s ass cheeks between his palms and looked down at Cas’s pucker, puffing a little breath of cool air over his damp tailbone to watch the way that made all of Cas’s muscles quiver against his hands, and that hot little furl tighten up prettily before his eyes.

Since Dean, unlike Castiel Novak, was _not_ a fucking bastard, he went right to it—a kiss to the inside of each of Cas’s cheeks, because even as eager as Cas was everyone needed just a little warm-up, then his tongue, dipping pointed, right center bullseye.

Cas’s gasp was loud enough to count as a grunt, and his thighs tightened when Dean _really_ went to work.

Cas honestly got off on rimming Dean stupid. Which, well, holy fuck _yes_. In fact, once Cas really _had_ gotten off just eating Dean out, apparently because he’d had his hips pressed just right on the edge of the bed _—_ Dean was pretty sure that Cas had been more embarrassed about that than Dean had been annoyed.

(Because Dean hadn’t been annoyed. Not at all. Maybe a little awed, though. Seriously, who could be annoyed by something that fucking hot?)

Whereas Dean, well. He liked to think he was a pretty giving guy in bed, but before Cas, he hadn’t done this in a really long while. Some of it had been opportunity—sticking his tongue up someone’s ass sure as hell wasn’t anything he’d do for a one-night-stand, and there’d been a lot of those in the past few years. And if he was perfectly honest, if his tongue was gonna be anywhere, Dean’d normally found having his face buried in a girl’s pussy a lot more enjoyable.

Cas’s reactions to getting eaten out, though, had pretty completely changed Dean’s mind about all that. This was _fun._ If Cas had gotten so good at giving because he knew what he liked getting, well, Dean Winchester had _no complaints_.

He hardly had to wait and circle his tongue around the little knot of muscle before Cas was relaxing to let him in. (Though Dean kept doing it anyway, because getting licked slow that way felt pretty awesome, and having Cas push impatiently back towards him after a few teasing little licks around and around was also equally awesome.) Cas breathed out slow and rasping, almost a sigh, the sound of it shaky around the edges the way Cas himself almost never was.

Okay, so maybe Dean kept on teasing for a little while longer. Just ‘cause. Just a few little flicks right at the edge of his rim. So Cas could feel the soft weight of lips along with the press of his tongue, maybe a long wet kiss. Or two. Or three.

(Or ten.)

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas growled, his back curving impatiently, and he almost hit Dean on the shoulder with the bottle of lube he shoved back in his direction.

Okay, so Cas wasn’t in the mood to be teased. Not that that would ever necessarily _stop_ Dean from doing it. It just meant that there was a good chance he was going to have to dodge an annoyed Bratva trying to pin him down at some point tonight.

Just for that, Dean lifted his head all the way away, letting his stubble barely brush against the sensitive insides of full ass cheeks, and Cas’s back _arched_ with frustration. Dean put a hand on the small of his back and rubbed him back down—because why, yes, he _was_ a jerk. But God, he loved how sensitive Cas was.

“One day, I’m gonna just lick you out and not stop,” he chuckled, thumbing across the little ridge of Cas’s sacrum, but he did grab up the bottle of lube with his other hand. “Not even a finger inside you to stroke you through it, just my tongue. I bet you can come like that.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” Cas answered, over his shoulder, so grouchily casual about it that Dean had to reach down and ease down on his own balls to keep all this from being over a little too soon.

Cas liked it a little rougher than Dean normally liked a mouth near his own tender bits, and when Dean, two fingers deep into him, sunk his teeth into the meat of that round, firm ass and bit a rosy bruise into the sensitive underside where Cas’s ass met his thigh, Cas let out his first rasping, throaty moan of the night like it’d been yanked out of him.

Not his last, though.

Dean sucked another hickey just beside where he had his fingers scissoring his sassy Bratva open, and smiled when Cas muttered, “Now, Dean.” He shifted, not _quite_ rubbing himself against the sheets and his own thigh, but… close.

He probably was ready. Probably. But Cas still had a bad habit of rushing through prep when it was his turn on the bottom sometimes, telling Dean he was good to go even when Dean was pretty sure that wasn’t possible yet. Which, well, hell, for as long as he was gonna be like _that,_ Dean was going to go all the slower.

Dean licked again. And _again_. Around his fingers. Cas shook when Dean spread his fingers enough that he could lick between them. When he pulled them out, the muscles of Cas’s pucker were so soft and open Dean could just press his tongue right in and in and in, God, _yeah_. Cas groaned _,_ dark, muffled into the stretch of his arm, and _fuck_ Dean loved that sound.

(No, Dean didn’t like those occasions when Cas went so silent under him and he could tell that what was going on wasn’t just that good burn and stretch, and he definitely didn’t like it when Cas’s muscles flinched hard against his. It occurred to Dean that he could probably make Cas stop jumping the damned gun on his own prep just by turning the tables on him, even just once. Dean liked getting fucked, they both did, but Cas had not been kidding one bit when he’d said he wasn’t into delivering pain.)

For now, though, Dean just added in a third finger, kept at it—moving slow and teasing, kissing Cas’s spine, spreading his fingers again and reaching for the bottle to drip lube right into him, trickling thick and clear down the soft line of his balls. A droplet of it meandered down the inside of each of his thighs. Cas was panting and growling and saying “Now, _now_.”

“Say ‘please,’” Dean chuckled.

Cas twisted, pushing himself up on his elbows and peering around over his shoulder. “Stop _teasing_ ,” he commanded.

Dean scoffed, and pulled his fingers the rest of the way out—slowly enough that he _felt_ Cas’s muscles bunch, heard Cas’s slow, shaky exhale. Dean watched greedily as his body fluttered wet and empty, stretched-out, flushed pink. “Oh, like you _ever_ stop teasing when I tell you to.”

“I do when you beg,” Cas informed him. “And you do it so prettily.”

Okay, Dean didn’t even know _how_ it was possible that this sonofabitch could make him blush even when _Cas_ was the one facedown and ass-up on the bed. “Fuck you.”

“Yes. _Exactly_. Do that,” Cas told him, so long-suffering that Dean put his cheek down on the rise of Cas’s ass and just _cackled_. “ _Not that_.”

Okay, if Cas didn’t mean to make Dean laugh harder, he was failing at it.

Cas kicked him. Not hard. But _still_.

_Hey!_

“Goddammit.” Dean swatted the back of Cas’s thigh where it went into the curve of his ass, hard. Cas jerked towards the headboard and flipped over onto his back with a graceful rush of muscle, only barely not smacking Dean in the face with a foot—must’ve been an intentional miss, Dean saw the twist of muscle, the way Cas’s calf had risen up and over his head rather than _through._

The dangerous look in Cas’s blue eyes made it very clear that he was rethinking that, though. If Cas hadn’t been the one already prepped and slick, there was an even chance _Dean_ would have ended up on his hands and knees and getting the breath fucked out of him. Dean was banking on Cas being too impatient for that right now, but he couldn’t say for sure he’d bet right.

So he really didn’t expect Cas to _grin,_ almost squeezing his eyes shut _—_ one of those rare, full-on things that flashed rare dimples, so completely unexpected that they always made Dean’s day just a little brighter.

“You’re very endearing, when you’re being so forceful,” Cas told him.

What? “Pretty sure those are two contradictory things,” Dean grumbled, and crawled on top of him, settling his elbows on either side of his pretty accountant’s face and glaring down at him. ‘Endearing?’ What the Hell. Also, Cas said ‘forceful’ like some people said ‘Awww, _cute_.’

“A little, yes, but not untrue,” Castiel informed him, prim as a preacher.

Dean groaned and dropped his head enough that their foreheads rested together. Cas was a pro at smirking with just his eyes, he didn’t even _need_ those damned plush lips of his. “You’re killin’ the mood here, buddy,” he muttered.

But Cas laughed, and one hand came up to drag into Dean’s hair and adjust him to Cas’s angle so they could kiss. “Come here.”

“Already here,” Dean mumbled against that bottom lip, then dipped his head to bite under Cas’s ear, worrying a fading hickey between his teeth. _Yum_. He sucked, harder, and felt Cas’s breath catch. “Ain’t goin’ nowhere.” He drew his head back and admired the freshly marked spot. “Want me to put on a condom?” Yeah, they still used them a lot of the time—didn’t feel as nice, but they both lasted longer, and clean-up was easier.

Cas didn’t even think about it. “No.”

 _Mmm_. Yeah.

Damn, but Dean _really_ enjoyed missionary, with Cas— _both_ giving it as well as getting it, though Dean probably wouldn’t ever tell him that. It wasn’t that being shoved down onto his front with a strong hand between his shoulder blades holding him down wasn’t _awesome_ , and he spent enough time leaving bites and hickeys across the back of Cas’s shoulders and neck that he was pretty sure Cas felt the same about being on _his_ belly or on his side.

But there was also nothing like being up on his knees with Cas’s heavy thighs spread so wide around him Dean could see _everything_ about him—the way his hands dug into the mattress, the long stretch of his cock smearing wet over his abs with the head of him peeking all flushed and delicious out of his foreskin because no-one had put a hand on him yet to push it the rest of the way back. He fucking _loved_ watching that full mouth of Cas’s fall open and his eyelids lower over those heartbreaker blue eyes as Dean slid in—Jesus, he was _always_ so tight on the first press, no matter how long Dean spent prepping and fingering him open.

Then Dean pulled out. All the way out, and looked down to watch Cas’s body close up behind him.

When he pushed back in, slow, guiding himself with a hand, that little hole opened up just as nice, with just that same little catch of tightness, spreading soft. Dean was tempted to just keep going—just sink in slow and deliberate and let Cas’s body swallow his cock up. It would—he knew it.

But Dean didn’t. He pulled the rest of the way out again.

“ _Dean_.”

Cas sounded just a little breathy. Just a little desperate. Dean looked up to study his face. Fuck, _yeah_.

Dean pressed back in, putting his weight on a hand on Cas’s inner thigh, bracing him open and keeping him from trying to squirm closer or push up. “You can’t complain… you did this to me the other week.” This time, Dean knew he was being a jerk, pushing half of his length in and then starting to pull the rest of the way out just as Cas’s eyes started to drift shut again. Cas _groaned._ His muscles tightened around Dean’s length, trying to keep him in, and ohhh _God_ that felt good. “Told you I’d get you back for it.”

Alright, he’d said that _before_ Cas had him desperate and screaming.

But Dean kept tugging anyway, rubbing very gently against that resistance, because it felt really fucking good on his end. From the way Cas bit hard on his lower lip, it felt just as good from his side of things as it had when Dean had been the one getting this treatment.

Cas couldn’t keep holding him this tight for more than a few gasps, and when he sucked in a shaky deep breath, it relaxed him enough that Dean slid all the way free again.

Cas _writhed._

Goddamn. _Definitely_ a bonus.

“You realize…” Cas gasped, pink-cheeked already. “I’m going to…”

“What are you going to?” Dean reached down and pressed at Cas’s slippery, tight, empty pucker, before dipping the very tip of his finger in and tugging, gently, at his rim. Then he eased in his whole forefinger in a long slide, just to give Cas enough pressure and stretch for a tease against his sweet spot, the edge of it firm underneath the pad of Dean’s finger. He was so _open._ Cas’s cock jerked on his belly, dripping a long wet line that made Dean’s mouth water.

“ _Dean_!” Cas complained, shivering. Then, “That’s incorrect syntax.”

Dean chin jerked up and he stared _._ Okay, what the _fuck?_

Cas was flushed and sleepy-eyed and taking little shallow breaths through parted lips; he looked so goddamned delicious that Dean’s back teeth clenched together. He was also smirking, with that challenging dark eyebrow of his raised high.

“You weren’t staying on topic,” Cas informed him. “I didn’t see why I had to.”

Just the quick, tight clench around Dean’s finger felt like both a punishment and a tease right back. Dean really wished he could decide whether he wanted to laugh or fuck Cas breathless. It was probably impossible to do both at the same time. Probably.

_Sonofabitch._

This time, when Dean pressed his cock in, he wasn’t playing anymore. Neither was Cas, though—he arched right into it with the insides of his knees pressing at Dean’s waist like he was out to prove he didn’t need an adjustment period, and in no time at all Dean was balls-deep in him.

Just ‘cause _Cas_ didn’t think he needed an adjustment period didn’t mean that _Dean_ didn’t, though, _fuck_. Dean knew that teasing Cas out would get him on edge, it always did, but just watching Cas _move_ like that, taking him in, was a damned religious experience. Cas’s nails, digging into his shoulder blades when Dean bottomed out, weren’t helping. He really needed a second to settle himself down—

“Easy,” he gasped, when Cas shifted impatiently underneath him. He didn’t think it’d been that long since they’d done this without condoms, but had Cas always felt this hot inside? Dean thought he could practically feel the flicker of every tiny muscle wrapping around his cock—actually, not having a hand or a mouth on him before they got here had probably backfired, because Dean felt _more_ sensitive, not less.

 _“Dean_ ,” Cas growled, and his knees tightened around Dean’s hips in a way that almost rolled Dean’s eyes back in his head, _fuck_. “If you do not hurry and _fuck me_ , I am going to knock you over and ride you until I’m satisfied.”

Now, if only that had sounded like more of a threat. Except Castiel Novak didn’t make threats, he made _promises._

“Thought I was gonna take care of you tonight,” Dean protested, bunching up the sheets on either side of Cas’s head in his fists. He really, really needed to _not_ blow his load too early.

“I’m _very_ certain I can take care of myself,” Cas told him, his eyes dark slits just barely edged with blue, and that wasn’t a purr, that was a velvet-coated growl.

Jesus Christ. The mental visual Dean was getting from that was _not helping,_ because as much as Cas liked watching Dean touch himself—he really did—those times when Dean had come into their room and found Cas with a knee up and his fingers up his ass were burned into his brain. His pelvis tried to flex. “Were you always this toppy?” he demanded.

“I’m very accommodating.”

“You are really fucking _not_ , Castiel,” Dean retorted. Goddammit, that eyebrow. But he wasn’t going to deny that the way Cas’s shoulders rolled back into the mattress, the loud grunt when Dean pulled back just enough to get some breathing room and then shoved right back in, weren’t all the more satisfying for it.

In the back of his mind he’d kind of planned on slow and easy, but best laid plans and all that.

But Cas settled down some, his eyes closing when Dean started moving for real, just little grinds since he didn’t actually want to pull out. Yeah, that was a pretty expression right there, all that cool tension softening out of Cas’s lips when they parted like that. Cas reached down to give his cock a few lazy tugs between them, brushing sweet as could be up and down the midline of Dean’s belly.

His eyes cracked open just slightly when Dean rebalanced and put a hand down between their bodies, but Dean wasn’t planning to stop him—he cupped his palm over the softer, hotter head of Cas’s cock and ran his thumb down his wet slit, letting him keep going on his own shaft.

Cas’s ass was still so tight around him, still _hot_ , but without Cas consciously squeezing and pulling against him control was a little easier. The look on his pretty face was so damned good, though—eyes closed again, eyebrows squeezing in a little as Dean rolled his hips in a slow circle.

“Here?” he asked.

“Hmm. Little…” Cas’s back arched, slow, under him as Dean changed the angle of his thrust, and at the same time rubbed his thumb against the soft band on the underside of Cas’s foreskin. Cas’s hand went still underneath his. Precome dribbled down the web between Dean’s thumb and forefinger. “ _Ah._ ”

Dean stopped both his hips and his hand. “Which?”

“You’re being a tease again,” Castiel rumbled, “and you will regret it.”

Dean grinned, and leaned in—whispered, “Promise?” with his teeth catching against the soft plush of Cas’s lower lip.

They ramped it up nice and easy, though, and Cas didn’t even try to flip him once. Cas let go of his own cock a few more strokes in. It felt like a damned gift when he set his hand on the back of Dean’s neck instead, the other on Dean’s ribs, letting himself get taken apart bit by bit. Fuck, oh fuck, _yes_. Dean didn’t try to move his hand—just rubbed circles around and around the head of Cas’s cock, and he didn’t try to pull back for more leverage.

It still wasn’t slow enough. Fuck, Dean was too damned _close_ already, and the way Cas was licking at the corner of his own mouth wasn’t helping. But Dean couldn’t look away, either. “Fuck… love takin’ you apart, Cas,” Dean gasped. “Love feelin’ you open up for me. C’mon, look at me. Lemme see you.”

Cas didn’t answer—just held on tight, inside and out, the nails of one hand digging so hard into the back of Dean’s neck he knew they’d be seeing crescents there. The sting of it was a hot bright light under his skin. But Cas’s eyes came open, the blue of them like the ring around an eclipse, watching him dark and hungry.

Not desperate, though. Not yet. Not how Dean wanted him to be.

“I’m gonna fill you up,” Dean told him, rocking good and deep. “Real soon, now. Mark you up inside. You’re gonna wake up tomorrow feeling my come inside you.” Cas’s eyes went a little wider. Jesus, where was this coming from? Dean was pretty filthy, but he normally wasn’t this filthy. He settled down further on top of Cas. “Maybe we should get a plug, you can keep it all in you. Or maybe a matching pair? I’ve been thinking about it, y’know? Maybe you can fuck me, then plug me up. Then I’ll do you.”

Yeah—yeah, that was it, he felt Cas’s whole body react underneath him, the tight sudden drag as he lifted right into Dean’s cock, almost a flutter. One leg shifted to loop over Dean’s hip, dragging him even closer. Dean had to let go of Cas’s cock to keep his balance. Sweat gathered hot between them, the hard ridge of Cas’s cock smearing long lines across both their bellies, and since this was Cas’s favorite angle, Dean ground in and went for it.

Cas moaned against his shoulder. _Perfect_.

When Cas raised his free hand and pressed two fingers to Dean’s lips, Dean opened for him. The weight of Cas’s fingers slid onto his tongue, Cas’s other hand pulling Dean’s head down against them. Cas’s skin tasted like his own precome, salt and sharp and bitter, and Dean swallowed saliva. He thrust hard enough into Cas that their bodies met with a slap.

Yeah, yeah, this was so good—him in Cas, Cas in him. Dean closed his lips soft around Cas’s long, callused fingers, sucked slow. Let his teeth skim skin when Cas rolled his hips under him.

Dean still came first—moaning loud around Cas’s fingers, pulling off them with a loud pop when his back spasmed enough that he thought he might choke. But he had to have his mouth on _something,_ and when he lowered his head Cas shifted, shoving himself up into Dean’s uncoordinated thrusts. If he hadn’t meant to put his shoulder right in the path of Dean’s teeth he shouldn’t have done that. But when Dean bit down Cas’s ass clenched tight around him—milked Dean right through every pulse with little pulls and tugs.

Jesus Christ, _Jesus Christ,_ there should be _no-one_ out there who needed to ask why Dean loved to top this little bastard.

But Cas was right behind him, shoving a hand still spit-wet between them with his lips parted, eyes glassy and not quite sane. Dean didn’t even have time to think about getting a hand back in there to help before Cas was stripping between their bodies with a firm rhythm, his knuckles rubbing hard through the sweat on Dean’s skin. He didn’t let down the leg he had wrapped around Dean, holding them together with the tense press of his calf.

“Fuck,” Dean whispered, kissing the little bow of Cas’s top lip. “Get me wet, Cas. C’mon.”

God, Cas’s noises—that soft, high cry as his head fell back and Dean felt hot spurts over them both—the little whimper when Dean rolled his hips one more time, and yeah, he was oversensitive, but the sloppy feel of it was just so fucking good when it milked one last little shaky spasm out of Cas.

Cas could take his weight when Dean let himself the rest of the way down against him. There was never any grumbling about that when Cas had just gotten fucked. Cas was relaxed and easy now, not quite limp under Dean when he cleaned Cas’s fingers off with his tongue—lazy with it, feeling Cas watch him through half-open eyes.

Something in the corners of his stoic little Russian’s mouth might’ve been a smile, might not, as Dean licked a big old playful stripe up the center of his palm, grinning down at him. Dean would keep looking until he figured it out.

There was a good chance Cas had ruined him for anyone else. Sometimes Dean thought about that. Most of the time, he didn’t care.

Cas didn’t push him off, this time, so Dean was _very_ gross and they were kind of sticking together by the time he pulled out and rolled off to the mattress. Still no complaints out of his Bratva, though. Cas even lay there and just watched, eyes half-open, as Dean turned off the bedside lights and went for the wipes in the side table, rather than trying to go to the bathroom.

(Falling over on his way to get a washcloth ‘cause he was wrong about whether his knees would hold him? Fucking embarrassing, even around a guy who dealt with Dean’s morning breath.)

Cas, surprisingly, was the one who broke the comfortable silence as Dean cleaned them both off with the cool, soft wipes, swiping gently at Cas once he’d gotten some of the mess off himself. Even in the dark he could tell how hard he’d bitten down on Cas’s shoulder.

“Why would I be first?” Cas asked.

Dean blinked, and looked up. “First?”

Cas stretched upwards, slowly, each muscle sliding into the next so sweetly that Dean could see it even in the dark, and turned onto his side, cheek propped on the curve of his elbow. “In that… situation you mentioned,” he clarified.

Huh. _Oh._ “Oh, you liked that idea, did you?” Dean mused, dropping the wipes off the side of the bed and lying back down, wiggling in until they were nose to nose.

He really had been just talking dirty, because that did help push Cas over when Dean was a little too close to the edge himself. But now that he thought about it… that sounded sort of awesome, didn’t it? Dean ran a hand a little possessively down Cas’s back and just kept going; Cas’s hole was still soft and wet to the touch even though the rest of him was wiped clean, and knowing why? Yup. That did it for Dean. Probably always would.

Cas didn’t blush—damn—but he did squint a little. “It’s… a compelling thought,” he admitted, after a moment. “But why would _I_ go first?”

Dean laughed. “Uh, ‘cause only one of us is still good to take it up the ass after he’s come his brains out, and it’s not me?” He dipped just his middle fingertip into Cas’s puffy rim, and Cas made a soft small _mmm_ sound that went straight to Dean’s cock.

That had been sort of a surprise. Cas didn’t even get hard, and the first time Cas had told him to just go for it, Dean had been a little worried and a little weirded out at first—hey, he _liked_ it when his partner was just as into getting fucked as he was at doing the fucking. But Cas had raised an eyebrow at him and noted, “It’s not that strange. You know I enjoy stimulation independent of whether or not my penis is being touched. Why, are you jealous?”

Frankly, after the first time he’d realized Cas was fucking coming _again_ , moaning loud and gritty, just a thin pale dribble wetting the sheets, and he wasn’t even more than halfway to an _erection?_ Damn. Dean _was_ a little jealous.

“I think you’re presupposing that you don’t orgasm while I’m inside you,” Cas noted, sleepily, but he shifted his hips into the touch, not away.

Dean snorted, and brushed his lips against Cas’s forehead. “Actually, I’m assuming you’re not gonna _let_ me come until you’re good and ready for me to, you kinky control freak.” He took his hand back, reluctantly, and let his knuckles rest on the firm arc of his Bratva’s tight waist. “You gonna tell me I’m wrong about that?”

“ _Hmmm_.” That was a _very_ interested noise that Cas was making low in his throat, and Dean laughed. Then Cas turned over and tried to nuzzle his back up against Dean’s front, and oh no, not this time. They had _rules_ about this kind of thing.

“ _Hey_ ,” Dean complained.

“Oh, _alright_ ,” Castiel grumbled, and they both shifted over again. Cas’s hips tucked real nice behind Dean’s, and his pointy chin hooked over the deep curve of Dean’s shoulder, cock slotting soft against Dean’s ass.

Yeah, okay, so half the nights their negotiation wasn’t about who got to fuck who. That part was easy. But Cas liked to spoon even if that still wasn’t Dean’s favorite position to sleep in, so if that was gonna happen, they had to figure out on any given night which of them got to be the _little_ spoon.

What? Going to sleep with a warm body all up against his back and an arm over his waist actually did feel pretty great sometimes, and it let Dean lean forward comfortably and flop onto his belly at some point during the night without having to wake up and reposition. Plus he _didn’t_ wake up spitting someone’s mop of black sex hair out of his nose and mouth if Castiel turned over and cuddled up in his sleep with one arm and one leg thrown over like he was wrestling Dean to the bed.

(Attack of the snuggly Bratva octopus, seriously. Dean couldn’t even claim he hadn’t known Cas did that, because he _had._ Holy fucking adorable, Batman.)

He was just starting to doze off when he remembered, and shook himself back awake. “You going to that meeting with Crowley tomorrow?” Dean asked over his shoulder, sleepily. “I’ll drive you.”

Cas stirred behind him. “It’s early.”

“I know. I don’t trust ‘im.” Dean always drove Sammy, too, whenever Sam met the guy alone.

“Well, he hates you.”

Dean snorted. “Only ‘cause I turned down his slimy Limey ass a couple of years ago.” Gross. Even if Dean _hadn’t_ had a rule about not sleeping with anyone in the business then, he’d still have turned Crowley down.

Cas went very still behind him. Oh, shit, maybe Dean shouldn’t have told Cas that.

Dean kept going, hastily. “Anyway, his people are kind of sloppy at patdowns, but they always find guns, an’ they won’t always give ‘em back. So don’t bring anything nice.”

“Mmm.” Cas’s arms tightened and he burrowed his face with a soft scratch of fuzz against Dean’s shoulder, and Dean felt the flash of teeth. “Noted. If he calls me Capo Singer’s new attack puppy one more time, though, I won’t be responsible for what I do.”

“Can I be your getaway driver if you kill him?” Dean asked, hopefully.

“I certainly hope so, since you’re driving me there.”

That got a laugh out of Dean, and in the dark of their bedroom, it sounded loud and bright, like fireworks. “We are the weirdest pair,” Dean told the wall, grinning.

Cas kissed the back of his neck—just a brief, perfunctory little smack. “We’re fine,” he told Dean, firmly. Happily. Dean thought he sounded happy, and pleasure curled in his chest. “We’re good.”

“Yeah.” Dean reached behind him and ran his palm up the side of Cas’s thick thigh, smiling as Cas wriggled down, nestled in and got his face tucked up possessively right where he always seemed to set it, chin between Dean’s shoulder blades with his nose tucked comfortably right into the crook of Dean’s neck. Yep, there he went. “Yeah, we are.”

They really were. Their families, their _jobs_ , and everything notwithstanding—they really were.

They were good _just_ as they were—no matter what anyone thought about their living situation, their gender, or whether or not they should get _fucking married_.

Right.

So maybe Dean would keep that ring hidden in his sock drawer for a little while longer.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> ...I guess I'm not marking this series as 'complete,' yet, huh?
> 
> Gosh, I have missed writing these grumpy boys, and I hope you enjoyed what was supposed to be a little 5K timestamp! At this point, I've resigned myself to the fact that this series is so porny that putting together the smut is almost inevitably what ends up delaying completion...
> 
> Don't judge Sam for ordering tuna tartare from Prime & Provisions! It's delicious. (Not gonna lie, Dean's bacon side is actually a little much for me, and I never thought I'd say that!)
> 
> Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park, along Lakeshore Drive, does truly have a wonderful light and music show in the warmer months! You just know that Cas has dragged Dean along more than once.
> 
> And lastly, Loft on Lake is a well-known fancy wedding venue in Chicago. This title is funny to absolutely no-one but me.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and if you are so inclined, come join us at the [Profound Bond Discord Server](https://discord.gg/profoundbond)!


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